Sephora Romania, the subsidiary of the famous French chain with beauty products and perfumes, posted on its Facebook page and Instagram an offensive advertisement associated with the terrible Pitesti prison, where thousands of prisoners were tortured by the communists. The post was deleted after a few hours.
The offending ad was deleted after a few hours PHOTO Facebook
On April 25, Sephora Romania will open a store in the new mall in Pitesti, and in order to promote the future store, it chose, in a very uninspired way, to post on its Facebook page an advertisement indirectly associated with the terrible Pitesti Experiment.
Specifically, on the afternoon of April 23, a post appeared on Sephora’s Facebook account in which there is a photo with black and white stripes and on which it is written: “Pitesti, I heard you like stripes“. Basically, through this post-advertisement an offensive association is made with the former Pitesti prison, the place where the terrible Pitesti Experiment took place, considered to be the largest and most intensive brainwashing program through torture in the entire communist bloc.
Just a few hours after posting the controversial ad and after dozens of negative reactions, Sephora Romania representatives chose to delete it from their Facebook account.
“Adevărul” asked Jean-Charles Trehan – external relations director of LVMH (the French group that owns Sephora), as well as Ralucai Turcan, the Minister of Culture, for opinions on the offensive ad at Sephora Romania, but until the time of writing this material he had not received no response. When he receives these answers, he will publish them without delay.
“An offense to the victims of the Pitesti Phenomenon”
However, Maria Axinte, the president of the Pitesti Prison Memorial Foundation, had a harsh reaction, who believes that the post is “an offense to the victims of the Pitesti Phenomenon“.
“Sephora Romania will soon open a store in the new mall in Pitesti and addresses the citizens of Pitesti as follows: “Pitesti, I heard you like stripes”. This campaign is obviously centered on the well-known subject of the Pitesti prison. It’s just that the residents of Pitesti know better and charged for this slip-up, and the comments on the company’s Instagram page did not take long to appear. Although we are happy to see that both the prison and the Pitesti Phenomenon have become topics discussed at the level of the general public, the attempt to turn this topic into a “joke” in a marketing campaign is an offense to the victims of the Pitesti Phenomenon, the work of the foundation ours and the efforts that are being made so that the public really knows the realities of the communist dictatorship in Romania”, says Maria Axinte.
The President of the Pitesti Prison Memorial Foundation hopes that Sephora Romania “to prove responsibility and publicly apologize for this, let’s elegantly call it a bad joke“.
“At the same time, we are happy to note that the public is increasingly informed and aware of the importance of this topic for Romania. The subject is far too serious to be treated so superficially. And because the Sephora team doesn’t seem so well-informed either in terms of history or memory, we invite them to a documentary visit to the Pitesti Prison Memorial. It is necessary, we believe”says Maria Axinte.
“Such an approach would not have been possible at Auschwitz”
The president of the Pitesti Prison Memorial Foundation also criticized the fact that Sephora Romania deleted the post after the wave of criticism.
“We believe that such an approach is dangerous. What’s worse is that Sephora deleted the post and declared that it has nothing to do with the events that happened in Pitesti. Which shows the lack of sensitivity to local history, with international echoes. We cannot pretend that nothing happened, we are talking about victims of an extraordinary violence. We can’t make jokes regardless of where we’re doing it. On Instagram, their attention was drawn to the fact that this approach would not have been possible at Auschwitz”adds Maria Axinte.
The Pitesti experiment, the largest brainwashing program through torture
In the period 1949-1951, the Pitesti Experiment took place at the Pitesti prison, considered to be the largest and most intensive brainwashing program through torture in the communist bloc. And of the many prisoners who went through the Pitesti Experiment, less than ten are still alive today.
Former Pitesti prison PHOTO Denis Grigorescu
The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – laureate of the Nobel Prize for literature – believed that the Pitesti experiment was “the most terrible barbarism of the contemporary world”and the historian François Furet, member of the French Academy, considered the Pitesti Phenomenon “one of the most terrible experiences of dehumanization that our age has known”.
Twelve young people died in the Pitesti Experiment and several hundred were tortured. Hundreds of former detainees were left with psychological or physical trauma for life.
The Pitesti Penitentiary was built between 1937-1941 and, at that time, it was the most modern detention facility in Romania. Located in the northern end of the city, the building was structured on four levels: basement, ground floor and two floors, arranged in the shape of the letter “T”.
However, it functioned as a penitentiary until 1977, when, following pressure from the West, the Pitesti prison was definitively closed, and the Pitesti Industrial Construction Trust was moved to its premises. In the early 1980s, blocks of flats were built on about a third of the surface of the prison yard, but part of the wall that surrounded the Pitesti Penitentiary still exists today, on the northwest side of the prison.
In 2011, several residents of Pitesti led by a passionate young woman, Maria Axinte, had the idea of establishing the Pitesti Prison Memorial Foundation. And this foundation has been managing the part of the building that has preserved the appearance of a prison ever since. In order to create a professional visiting circuit, several investments were made here, thanks to the dozens of volunteers who got involved in the project. And in 2014, part of the former Pitesti prison was opened to the public.
The cell of the former Pitesti prison became a historical monument in the summer of 2023.
Tags: Shit heard stripes Sephora offends thousands victims Pitesti Experiment Acid reactions
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